One thing leads to another. In this case a discussion of the function that a behavior serves takes us to an examination of “polite" behavior. How can we teach our horses how to safely co-exist in the environments we have chosen? There are obvious...

In this week’s episode our long afternoon conversation continues. Last week we focused on cue communication. If cues open up the possibility of a two way conversation, this brings us to the question of how do you respond when your animal says no? Y...

This episode is part of a long conversation Dominique Day and I were having one afternoon in late May. Dominique had been rewatching the Loopy Training DVD. So our conversation began with a discussion of movement cycles and poisoned cues. Last wee...

It was Dr. Jesús Rosales Ruiz who gave us the name “Loopy Training”. That’s a name that seems on first glance to be silly and frivolous but it's really grounded in the very sophisticated concept of movement cycles. This week’s podcast is part of a...

Karen Pryor coined the term “poisoned cue”. She commented that behavior analysts can easily set up experiments that look at pure positive or pure negative reinforcement. But Karen said that’s not the real world. The real world is filled with mixe...